The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Audina M. “Nina” Berrocal, MD, FASRS: Hi, I’m Nina Berrocal, MD. I am the program chair of the 44th Annual ASRS meeting, and we're here in beautiful Montreal.

Maria H. Berrocal, MD: I am Maria Berrocal, MD, and I am so happy to be here. And I think this meeting has been amazing. It has been totally innovative. It’s a new format. We are including a lot of younger people, a lot of women. It’s very diverse. The topics are great.

So Nina, you’ve done a spectacular job—not just because she’s my sister, but she has done a spectacular job. And definitely my favorite part of the meeting has been the surgery around the world. The cases were phenomenal. We had a lot of very young people from all parts of the world just showing really outstanding surgeries. And I think we’re going back to our roots, because ASRS started as the Vitreous Society. It was the first vitrectomy-oriented society that we actually had, and it's amazing how far we've come.

Dr. Nina Berrocal: I have to say that when I was planning this meeting, I wanted to showcase young surgeons, not only from the United States, but from around the world. So that’s what inspired the Retina Surgery Around the Globe session. We had an international lunch where we had more international surgeons present their movies, which was really great. And not only that, but a lot of discussion. A lot of people criticize the short format of the talks, but I had this idea that it’s better to try to be short in the talks and then have a robust discussion about the talks. So I think it has worked. I like it.

So for me, that has been interesting, but to see so many women on stage—and these are women that I don’t necessarily know, but women that I know about, and I ask about other women that maybe they’re not on my radar so that when we're up there, we can see the range of women in retina. Not only women in retina, but young people in retina. And I think that has made the meeting really kind of fresh and vibrant.

Dr. Maria Berrocal: I love the format. Nowadays you can get the talks, you can see them at home, you can download them, but the discussion is really where you learn the most. "Why do you do it this way? Why did you do this in this study?" And that has been priceless. RP